The Alexa rank is second only to Google page rank when it comes to measuring a site. People seem to have a lot of questions about Alexa. I’ll try to answer the questions that I’ve seen asked the most. The answers may surprise you.

1. What is Alexa measuring anyway?

Alexa measures visits to your site. Sounds great so far, build traffic and get a better ranking right? No. It measures visits to your site, but only people with the Alexa toolbar installed count. If you don’t run a site about SEO or webmaster related topics, you won’t get very many readers with the toolbar installed.


2. Should I be worried about my Alexa ranking?

No, not really. Unless you offer paid posts on your site, it’s meaningless. A lot of the better paying advertisers that use sponsored posting programs want a high Google PR and a low Alexa rank. I’m sure that makes sense, at least to them, since there are so few verifiable ways to measure a site’s worth to the potential advertiser. Even if you do offer sponsored posts to support your site, like I do, it might not matter too much. Your site will do a lot better, and probably make more money, if you focus on more important things. Content, site design and promotion, are far more important to you than Alexa.

3. How can you get a better Alexa ranking?

Ask your readers to install the Alexa toolbar. This is your best option, and it’s even better now that Alexa supports Firefox. You can even get a custom toolbar for your readers. Alexa will let you offer your readers a toolbar with a custom graphic supplied by you. An added bonus for Amazon affiliates, if someone with your custom toolbar installed makes a purchase at Amazon you get a commission. That’s why I’m going to offer a custom toolbar in the near future.

There’s some speculation that posting an Alexa widget on your site will count the visitors without the toolbar. I have no idea if it works. I added one to this site’s footer to check it out.

Update:

• The Alexa widget does work. It counts everyone who visits your site, as long as the Alexa image loads. So your visitors don’t need to have the toolbar installed.

My thoughts.

If you write sponsored posts then improving your Alexa rank and your Google PR are probably in your best interest. Don’t start stressing out about it though. The best way to improve your rankings is to make your site or blog the best it can be. The only thing you really have control of is your site. Put good quality content on there and keep it updated. Make your site easy to use. Try to make it as appealing as possible to readers. If it’s something people want to read, the rankings will be good.

I’d also like to give a shout out to JohnCow.com who got me thinking about this. You might want to read his post titled ” Boost Your Alexa Rank Today “.

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Come and get it, free wallpaper. This is the wallpaper I’ve been using for a little while. I made it while trying to come up with a background for this site. I used the smaller one in .png format and set it to stretched, but for this post I resized it so it’s easier to install. Use them if you want.

I converted it to .bmp too, but wordpress won’t upload those. Too big I’m guessing. These are all .png, I’ll try to get the .bmp up later.

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John Chow is giving away a nice wide screen monitor. All you have to do to enter is pimp the contest like I’m doing right now. What’s a little bit of integrity and self respect compared to a brand spankin’ new LCD?

It’s sponsored by BlueFur.com. They’re hosting Canada. I know the stereotype is that there’s not much in Canada, but that still must take up a lot of room on the server. I mean c’mon, hosting an entire nation? That takes balls. Blue furry ones apparently.

Check it out. Who knows, maybe you can sell the monitor and make money.

: John Chow, wide screen monitor, pimp, contest, LCD, BlueFur.com, Canada, balls, furry, make money

I found ArtRage while looking for free/cheap graphics software. Is sounded great, and the screenshots looked pretty simple. I downloaded the free version to try it out. Less than a week later I bought the full version, and here’s why.

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I’ve been looking at a few free graphics editing programs lately. While looking over some listings at freeware sites I stumbled upon GimpShop.

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